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Comment by mmm_grayons | Hacker News Reader

In fairness to Apple, they didn't just make other ports for the sake of it. When lightning mini was made, it was objectively better than mini-USB. When magsafe was made, it was objectively better than barrel plugs (and for charging, it's still better than USB-C.) Now that the standards are better, Apple is slowly transitioning to USB-C, which is a standard.

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If by "slowly transitioning" you mean "massively and publicly driving adoption of USB-C", then yes, I agree.

Apple has been pushing for the interoperable USB standard for as long as it has existed. The original iPhone was either the first phone to charge from USB, or at minimum the first successful mass-market phone to do so.

Apple definitely did not lead on USB-C. Premium Android and Windows laptops standardized on USB-C long before.

The Apple MacBook was March of 2015.

The Galaxy Note 5, released in August of 2015, used a MicroUSB port. I think we'd both agree that is a premium Android device, and clearly, "standardized on" USB-C did not happen "long before".

In fact, Android only introduced support for USB-C in 6.0, officially released in October 2015:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB-C#Software_support

So I'm quite sure your memory is faulty, on that one.

Given that the specification for USB-C was only finalized in August of 2014, I'm confident your statement about Windows laptops is equally off base.

Have windows laptops even standardized on USB-C now? I still see a lot of Windows laptops that come with barrel plug charging and all the legacy ports, and then have a sole USB-C port that you can also use for charging if you buy a separate charger

The problem is if they have the space for a USB-A plug, realize that tons of NEW consumer devices still use that! Apple can convince its customer base to buy dongles, but will all Windows PC users be happy with that?

I remember making the observation a few years back that when the MacBooks went USB-C, they marked the first time that, as far as I know, Apple ever shipped a machine that had no proprietary ports on it... and it was so ironic that people (including, I'd note, on HN) were really angry about it. I still get into arguments with people insisting that it was all just a plot for Apple to force you to buy dongles.

THe thing is, I appreciate the fact that they are pushing USB-C, it's a thing that needs to happen, and the sooner the better.

However, how am I supposed to use a laptop with _two ports_, one of which will be consumed any time I am charging.

I go over that on my laptop all the time.

To the point that you can easily find a USB-C port on all their iPhone, iPad and other devices yes ! Wait...

You can find usbc ports exclusively on newer macbooks and ipads, which is pretty significant, and they also come on the desktop macs. I'm guessing it will appear in iphones at some point; I believe Apple was considering a switch for the latest iphones but backed out in May. It's reasonably likelt that the next models will drop the lightning mini.

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